When a physician orders a prescription from a remote location using a cell phone, significant patient information and interactions to current medication is not available. In addition, the physician is calling the pharmacy and talking to the pharmacist, taking the pharmacist's attention away from filling prescriptions. During the phone call, the pharmacist asks the physician for their DEA number to validate their identity. This ID can be obtained by those not licensed to prescribe medications. As a matter of fact, many times the DEA number is pre-printed on the physician's prescription pad. Current studies note that in 2004 nearly 2 million prescriptions were filled incorrectly by a pharmacy. Many times, these errors resulted in results not desired by a health care professional. This current manual process is prone to errors and exposes the patient, physician, and pharmacist to unnecessary physical and financial risks.
From the physician's and pharmacist's perspective, these risks and inefficiencies are key drivers that raise the cost of insurance. From a patient's perspective, confidence in the process will increase patient satisfaction. Moreover, the more decentralized patient information is, the more difficult it is to drive efficiencies that can lower overall medical costs.
Therefore, it would be desirable to improve management of patient medications by improving a physician's and pharmacist's ability to securely and safely prescribe, transmit, and fill patient prescriptions.